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BGAN Extension Phase 2

Competitiveness & Growth
STATUS | Ongoing
STATUS DATE | 16/12/2011
ACTIVITY CODE |

PAGE CONTENTS

Objectives

The objectives of this project are to design, develop, test and trial new service extensions to BGAN to provide efficient delivery of IP-multicast traffic to mobile users via the Inmarsat-4 satellites.

The Phase 1 IP-multicast services have been designed to support a range of applications, including efficient content delivery such as streaming video and audio, and file delivery to large populations of users. The Phase 2 IP-multicast services will be designed to support interactive communications such as push-to-talk voice and collaborative workgroup data applications, as well as situational awareness applications, for instance in support of disaster-relief personnel.

The objectives of this project are to deploy both categories of services in a trial configuration during this programme.

Challenges

There are a number of key issues had to be addressed during the programme:

  1. Develop service concepts and models for the secure and reliable distribution of multicast applications;
  2. Support complex network topologies including IP-multicast sources with and without routers in the mobile domain;
  3. Identify appropriate triggers for service activation and control;
  4. Dynamic management of groups and bearer quality of service.

These elements introduced challenges in terms of architecture design and interface definition. Furthermore, the real-time operation of the Radio Access Network proved complex and tedious to implement, but was successful in the end.

 

 

Plan

The project plan involves the parallel development of the following elements:

  1. Micro-SAS (Satellite-Access-Station): Gatehouse/Livewire/ SPCI;
  2. User-BMSC with Secure Reliable Multicast Server: LogicaCMG;
  3. IP-Multicast-enabled Land-Vehicle Mobile Terminals (EMS-Ottawa); and
  4. A suite of IP-multicast applications (Ammeon/ AnsuR/ Chartco).

All development activities took place during 2007 and 2008, culminating in phased integration exercises during 2009. In preparation for future satellite trials, during 2010 all elements have been integrated into an end-end real-time Proof-of-Concept (PoC) system on the bench, including multicast-enabled BGAN terminals and collaborative tools applications.

In addition, the programme also involved the development and evaluation of Multi-User Detection technology (Space-Time DSP) for netted communications via omni-directional terminals.

Current Status

Project completed.